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WASHINGTON — International chemical-weapons experts generally agree that the evidence presented
yesterday in an unclassified U.S. report about the alleged use of chemical weapons in Syria seems
stronger than the faulty intelligence employed to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

But doubts remain.

“There are lots of things that aren’t spelled out,” said Richard Guthrie, formerly project
leader of the Chemical and Biological Warfare Project of the Stockholm International Peace Research
Institute.

For example, the report refers to intercepted communications among Syrian regime officials,
Guthrie said, but it provides no transcripts.

“That’s the difficulty,” he said. “There’s still this problem of, ‘Trust us, we have more
intelligence.’ ”

The Obama administration released the unclassified intelligence report in an effort to make its
case for military intervention in Syria. The report said the government has “high confidence” that
the Syrian regime carried out a poison-gas attack in the Damascus suburbs on Aug. 21.

“High confidence” is the strongest position the U.S. intelligence community can take short of
confirmation.

The four-page document relies on a wide variety of sources, from human intelligence and
satellite images to social media and videos. It says satellites detected rocket launches from
regime-controlled territory to neighborhoods where the chemical attacks reportedly occurred, and a “
Syrian regime element” in the area prepared for the launch by utilizing gas masks.

The report also references intercepted communications involving a senior regime leader “who
confirmed that chemical weapons were used by the regime on Aug. 21 and was concerned with the U.N.
inspectors obtaining evidence.”

Gregory D. Koblentz, an expert in weapons of mass destruction at the Council on Foreign
Relations, said similar declassified documents were released by the United States in 1998 before
the bombing of Iraq — an attack by the U.S. and Great Britain over Iraq’s failure to comply with
United Nations weapons inspections — and in 2003 before the invasion of Iraq.

The intelligence in this situation looks different from 2003 because the U.S. knows that weapons
were used and the information is coming from multiple sources, Koblentz said.

“The evidence looks to be pretty ironclad,” he said.

But Koblentz cautioned that it’s difficult to evaluate the strength of the evidence that would
determine Assad’s direct responsibility for the attacks.

“Establishing a chain of command — that’s the more difficult thing,” he said.